


Pressed Ink

by levitatethis



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Found Family, Immortal Husbands, Love Letters, M/M, Not An Epistolary Fic, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26307313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levitatethis/pseuds/levitatethis
Summary: Yusuf and Nicolò have been together for many centuries.  However, there have been times when they have been parted.During those separations they wrote letters.The act of writing has been as profound and revealing to them as anything that is said.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 22
Kudos: 143





	Pressed Ink

**Author's Note:**

> As much as I love the idea of reading complete letters between them, this fic focuses on the act of writing -- what it says of intentions and motivations, how those letters are received.
> 
> The idea for this came from an amazing youtube video titled "Someone to Stay" by MidnightPhenomenon. At the 2:23 mark there's a juxtaposition of clips -- Nicky on a typewriter then Yusuf reading at a table.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSoIM4mdP58

_“A letter always seemed to me like immortality_  
_because it is the mind alone without_  
_corporeal friend.”_  
_~ Emily Dickinson_

Yusuf believes handwritten letters are one of the truest forms of art.

The curved and swaying lines, dashes and strokes flowing as one are as intimately revealing as the words they spell out and the feelings they spill forth.

He has practiced his penmanship (including the evolution of calligraphy) since his youth and takes pride in the beauty of the elegant strokes, the pigmented lines thinned or pressed bold. Each movement forward, every rise and fall, is a promise from his heart down through his fingers to the parchment below.

He takes pleasure in the exquisite ache that nearly numbs that same hand when there’s been too much to say and yet it’s still not enough.

For Nicolò he takes as much time as needed to present his bared soul in offering when physical distance has pulled taut the invisible rope that ties them together. It’s not often they’re apart but sometimes circumstances can’t be avoided and the space between them is too far a distance and too long a time.

That is when Yusuf makes a sacrament and conjures forth the depth of what Nicolò means to him; inks paper thoughts and dreams that are sturdy enough to cross any geography.

> **_My love is not bound to one place._ **  
>  **_It is bound to you._ **
> 
> **_Where I go, I carry you within._ **
> 
> **_It is not possible for me to be alone in this world as long as you share beneath the same sky._ **
> 
> **_My heart’s companion. My North Star. Steady and true._ **

******* ***** ***** ***** *******

Nicolò enjoys the emphatic deliberation of the typewriter.

The sound of the keys beneath his fingers pounding out letters in a declarative octave, the rhythmic cadence as words march across a once empty landscape. There is nothing lost in the message. It is clear and concise yet no less sentimental than the letters postmarked to him from half a world away.

He doesn’t trust his own handwriting, feels awkward angles where it should be circular, the alphabet lost in the haze of connecting letters together when his wants outrun the pace of his crooked fingers. The mechanism becomes more of a challenge than what he is urged to say.

Sitting at the typewriter Andy found for him (on one of her requested lone travels) while the midday sun or moonlit night acts as his compatriot, he says everything he can willingly give to the man he had first come to love so long ago.

> **I had forgotten what time away from you is like.**  
>  **To be apart from you is to be lonely with an absence I do not care for.**  
>  **There is a void at my side.**  
>  **I long for you so much it cannot be real. It is without compare.**  
>  **But knowing you are still with me in this world brings me peace.**

******* ***** ***** ***** ***** *******

Every letter Yusuf receives from Nicolò is treated with the reverence of a unique manuscript to be savoured, devoured, and handled with care.

In the two-by-two kitchen of a barely there home he is currently sharing with Andy in Beirut (for a job that’s already gone three months longer than expected) he stares at the envelope in front of him. Andy, upon recognizing the familiar scrawl across the front, had smiled fondly and said, “I’ll leave you to it,” as she head out for a few hours to offer him privacy.

Using a personally inscribed letter opener Booker had gifted him, he carefully tears the top edge of the envelope and delicately removes the folded pages within, laying them flat on the table.

He reads Nicolò’s letters many times.

First he holds them in both hands, smiling and murmuring the words, his tongue hitting the back of his teeth.

The second time around he uses his left hand to hold the paper firm against the table while his eyes follow the journey of his right hand, fingers running beneath the sentences structured so strong and confidently. This is Nicolò making sure there’s no room for misunderstandings like the ones that plagued their early years.

Later he will bring the pages to his nose and inhale, he will memorize the sentences and trace their coloured indentations by touch.

He hears Nicolò’s voice, the way he accentuates some syllables more than others, the emphasis he places at the beginning or end, the orchestral movements of his tone unlike anyone else in Yusuf’s world.

He feels Nicolò’s skin against him, his lips speaking a soft whisper in Yusuf’s ear, a barely there smile in mixed company that burns effusively when it’s just the two of them.

Still waters run deep and Nicolò is the open ocean with no discernable bottom.  
  
  


> **Every day my thoughts turn to you.**  
>  **Yusuf. I say your name, a prayer in offering.**  
>  **My Yusuf. It sings like a hymn, heard and accepted.**  
>  **My only Yusuf.**  
>  **I wait for you to come back to me.**

  
******* ***** ***** ***** *******

Nicolò hoards Yusuf’s words as if his life would be rendered forfeit without them.

Any private place used to do until he accidentally dropped one of Yusuf’s more yearning missives in the bathtub, so wrapped up in the daze of mutual desperation. His sudden panic had led to Booker calmly yet efficiently carrying the damaged pages to the kitchen, laying them flat to dry on a spread out dishtowel.

“His words are still there, Nicky. You haven’t lost them,” Booker had promised.

Sometimes Nicolò pours over a letter in a hunched c shape, melting into the large armchair in the living room. Other times he reclines in their bed with his back up against the wall and his legs bent in front to prop up the affirmations Yusuf has so thoughtfully and carefully committed to the page; an oath of forever, an unbreakable vow that is still free and flowing, none of that stifling rigidity of the life forced upon Nicolò before they first crossed paths.

There is space in their togetherness that allows him to breathe (so serenely) and exult (so sweetly) and feel (so deeply); to laugh in ways that spring forth from hidden depths, guttural and honest, happiness without pretense.

Nicolò has always kept a cool outward countenance. Giving nothing away doesn’t mean he lacks feelings. Yet Yusuf’s words still manage to pierce his heart. The raw openness with which he declares himself and his intentions is heady and soul warming and unlike anything Nicolò has ever thought possible. Sometimes he wishes he could return such poetry in the way Yusuf deserves yet knows that has never been a demand, expectation, or dealbreaker.

He barely blinks as he reads and rereads. All of it is as beautiful in meaning as the patience and consideration obvious in its creation. His heart pounds in return, a ghost of a smile plays across parted lips as he gently thumbs the paper and holds it close so his gaze can travel the upward slopes and downward drives of pressed ink; close enough so his lips brush a paper kiss and blue stains make twins of his fingers and the script.  
  
  


> _**Just as the moon and sun are inevitable necessities of life (facts of our existence moving around one another in a dance), when they do come together they render the world stilled, awed, mesmerized in wonder by their combined beauty and power.** _
> 
> _**You are the peace to my restlessness, the soothing touch to my uncertainty.** _
> 
> _**With you I am never anything but sure.** _

******* ***** ***** ***** *******

They rarely indulge like this even when it’s just them.

But time are strange and everything feels tilted just off its axis. This need for stability, to reestablish that which makes sense, never wavering, is urgent. At the same time it unfolds with a languid playfulness.

They have the house to themselves for a few days. All it took was a look and the glimpse of a familiar worn envelope and they knew how they would spend their shared solitude.

They lay out at opposite sides of their bed, sunlight tiptoeing through the open bedroom window, birds sing-songing in the garden, the distant thrum of traffic a steady beat beyond. Yusuf smiles while he leans down and presses a chaste yet suggestive kiss to Nicolò’s ankle while the other man reads aloud one of the many letters he sent Yusuf about fifty years earlier.

He knows this one (all of them, truth be told) like the back of his hand but to hear Nicolò speak his cherished confessional now, as if nothing has changed after all this time, rumbles a soft and steady desire tied to serenity throughout Yusuf that he can’t verbalize so instead he allows himself to sink within it.

When it’s Yusuf’s turn as orator, Nicolò fixes him with an impenetrable stare so focused he can see the way Yusuf’s chest stutters with his shallowed breath beneath it. Nicolò closes his eyes and blindly massages Yusuf’s leg, long and light movements building in the moment all in anticipation of hearing that familiar melodic voice recounting their love, a reminder then and now that nothing was undone by being apart.

Nicolò, too, has committed to memory this epistolary of lives lived many times over.

It was never agreed upon that both men would save the letters they received; nothing quite so overtly romantic to indicate their lovers hearts. It was an act without prompt.

Together and apart; words spoken, written, or coded in silence; they have existed within a shared realm, two separate pieces moving as one. Complimentary in the balanced differences that are the makers of both.

Back and forth they trade their archived scribes, shared memories memorialized letter for letter.

What was then

What is now.

What will be.


End file.
